


a duty uprooting, a garden to grow anew

by mollivanders



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon Universe, F/M, Gen, Missing Scene, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 02:05:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18714304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: (The few roots they’d put down, the little family she’d known – all of it, gone).So she does the only thing she can do, under the circumstances. She follows Saw, step by step, into a new life, and despite his warnings, she grows new roots.(She builds a new life – step by step.)





	a duty uprooting, a garden to grow anew

**Author's Note:**

  * For [motherofangst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/motherofangst/gifts).



> Written for motherofangst in the third Rebel Captain Network May the Fourth Exchange. Prompt was _"I tried carrying the weight of the world, but I only have two hands."_

She is eight years old, watching her family farm burn as Saw holds her hand very (very) tightly in his.

 _My child,_ he’d said, a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. _Come. Come. We have a long ride ahead of us._

She had taken the rungs of the ladder one at a time, every step taking her further away from home. Her mother wasn’t coming. Her father wasn’t coming. Her old life – the few years of it she’d known – was falling fast behind her as she looked out the view plate of Saw’s shuttle.

(The few roots they’d put down, the little family she’d known – all of it, gone).

So she does the only thing she can do, under the circumstances. She follows Saw, step by step, into a new life, and despite his warnings, she grows new roots.

(She builds a new life – step by step.)

She doesn’t listen as closely as she should have; heeds the instructions but not the warnings, and not the first warning Saw had ever given her – so the second time she’s uprooted without warning – she stumbles.

(She falls – alone – and doesn’t get back up.)

Somewhere in the drift, Jyn Erso disappears – and Kestrel Dawn gets back up.

+

He is six. He has just come home from school, and his sister is waiting at the door. She’s only a child herself, but at eleven, he still follows Syrah’s every lead.

“Where is mama?” he asks, because it is usually their mama who comes to greet him at the door. She is not usually waiting with smiles, but the tense furrow between her eyes is familiar and it does not concern him. Her not being there at all frightens something out of him, foreboding in his sister’s eyes, and he holds his breath.

“Come inside,” his sister says, guiding him over the threshold. “Quickly.”

(Everything happens quickly after that.)

Syrah tells him to pack, and he shoves his favorite clone action figures inside it before Syrah pulls them out and fills it with other things – things he will be very glad are there later. They disappear, into the night, and go into hiding in the caves outside Mitris. It’s cold, and damp – colder and damper than usual on Fest – and he clenches his jaw against chattering teeth as Syrah sleeps fitfully beside him. They are not alone, refugees from the cities crawling all over the hills, and in retrospect, he will understand how inevitable the attack was. The Emperor could not allow even the smallest measure of escape or resistance –

(and he does not.)

The last memory he has of Syrah is her pushing him onto an escaping shuttle, her mouth still shaped around the word _Go!_ as he looks down on her, the shuttle already racing towards the stratosphere.

(When he steps off the shuttle onto an unknown planet – he is not the same.)

+

She had learned well, under Saw’s tutelage. Not for nothing did he call her the best soldier in his cadre; he had taught her this dance from the moment they had landed on Onderon.

 _Forward, back, step to the side, back, forward_ – always anticipating where her opponent was _going_ to be, not where they were, reading feints out of the air, fighting past the point of exhaustion, past the point where she couldn’t feel the blows anymore. Past the point where she even thought to stay in the same place from moment to moment; past the point where she wanted to.

 _It is the only way to survive,_ Saw had told her. _Be stronger, and when you can’t fight anymore – find a way to fight anyway._

He was not, she knew, known as the Lion for nothing.

(He had his mantle; she hers; and both of his making.)

But now, on her own, with no allies, and no supplies, and no intel – she at last found the flaw in his plan. He’d taught her to fight, and she’d fought beside him and their friends until she couldn’t stand anymore. Yet in all of that – he’d never insisted she fight for something _more_ \- and even if he had, he’d cut her off from it anyway. The fight was about survival, and against an invading enemy, but there had been little time for thoughts of _duty_ or _allegiance_ , and less so after the break with the Alliance.

Worse – the name _Erso_ was not the only problem; her very stance gave her away.

When at last she’s betrayed by new allies – tentative allies – barely allies – and ends up in an Imperial labor camp, she slumps against the cold metal, lifting her gaze to the ceiling. If she cannot fight alone, and she cannot fight with others, she decides – she’ll have to fight for herself.

(At least of that, she thinks, falling into fitful sleep, Saw would approve.)

+

His hands are covered in grease, relegated to the simple (and yet – not so simple) task of cleaning and fixing X-wing parts. If he screws up, a pilot could die in the air, but it’s not something that keeps him awake.

(Being kept out of the fight – now that _burns_.)

He is three years older than the last time he saw Syrah; he cannot find her. He does not know if that’s a good thing or something worse. It casts a dark gloom over his expression; it’s impossible to do anything stuck here on base while others go out and fight. It makes him restless, and makes him learn everything he can about everything he can, seeking a shadow of a life not there anymore.

Even as he thinks it, a shadow falls over him, and he looks up to see a balding man with a clipboard looking down at him.  
“Andor?” the man asks, looking down at his clipboard. “Cassian Andor?”

He jumps to his feet, parts clattering to the deck floor as he stands at attention. “Yes, sir,” he says, his voice breaking on the second word. The other man frowns.

“You look older than I expected,” he mutters, and shakes his head. “I need someone to infiltrate and recon an Imperial parts plant. They’re hiring, and they’re looking for small people. Kids.” Cassian frowns, and the man explains, “Tight spaces in that factory, Andor.”

“I’ll do it,” Cassian blurts out, practically straining against his deck uniform. “I can do it.”

“How old are you really?” the man asks, and Cassian holds back a glare.

“Old enough to fight,” he answers, and the older man chokes back a laugh.

“If you say so,” the man says, and turns away. “You’ll be reporting to me on this mission,” he says, and casts a glance back at the teenager behind him. “Draven,” he adds. “General Draven.”

Cassian nods. He’s ready. He’s been ready. He’ll report to this general, or whoever else will throw him into the fight. He can manage, small and young – or not.

(When he comes back – and he does come back – he does not reflect on how wrong he really was.)

He only thinks about how now, at least, he’s in the fight – and with something more to fight _for_.

+

He circles around her, taller and calmer than she’s seen him before. The frenetic energy that’s been vibrating off of him all the weeks she’s known him has dissipated, and she can see it transforming into action.

“I’m not used to people sticking around when things go bad,” she murmurs, tilting her face up to his. He is close – extremely close – and at this range, his very presence is intoxicating. She breathes carefully, treading even more carefully over this new truce.

(Something more than a truce.)

“Welcome home,” he murmurs, and she thinks of all the times she’s been told to leave – to run – and now he’s opened a place to stay. A place she wants to stay. How that very story mirrors his own, for all that they’ve walked different paths. His eyes are shining, bright with hope and even joy, and a smile she can’t contain lights her up from inside. There are a thousand things she wants to say to him – things that have no place before battle, before they fight for their lives and something more – but things she wants to say all the same. She wants to close that gap between them, a bridge lifting them higher – to something more than just the fight before them.

 _Later_ , she thinks. _I’ll tell him later._

+

(In the quiet of the space shuttle, racing away from Scarif as the world below them burns – she does.)

_Finis_

**Author's Note:**

> I refuse to kill Syrah! Star Wars has too many dead women as it is. She's, er, fine. She's just well hidden. It's a big galaxy.


End file.
